For forty years, our name has included the word program. It’s a perfectly good word. We use program with this meaning: plan of action to achieve a specific result. Starting when we became a program of the Edgartown Court in 1984, and going forward to the present, the word “program” has been there, indicating our plan to promote and provide mediation services, with the mission of helping individuals and organizations to resolve their conflicts amicably. 

About 40 years ago, right around the time she began writing her seminal article The Logic Behind the Magic of Mediation, Albie Davis came to Martha’s Vineyard to help provide training for the court-sponsored program, which was then just one year old. In that journal article Davis wrote: “I’ve never mediated a case where I didn’t see a little piece of myself in each of the parties, the best and the worst of their qualities. I knew I could be in their shoes . . .” 

Today, we find a unique phenomenon, with five generations who are fully participatory in modern adult life. This is the first time in history such a grand span of ages and birth years are co-existing in society in significant numbers.